Text Emoji and Emoticons: Copy, Meanings and Japanese Kaomoji

Emoticon vs Emoji: What Is the Difference?

An emoticon (emotion + icon) is made by combining normal characters. 🙂 is just a colon, a hyphen and a bracket. You read it by tilting your head to the left. An emoji is a single picture character with its own Unicode code, like 🙂, which your phone draws in colour.

Some people call these emoticons symbols, others say emoticons text; either way, emoticons and emojis are not the same thing, but they do the same job: they add tone to text.

Where the 🙂 Smiley Came From

The sideways smiley is older than smartphones. In 1982, computer scientist Scott Fahlman proposed using 🙂 to mark a joke and 🙁 to mark something serious on an online message board at Carnegie Mellon University in the USA. People had misread jokes in plain text, and a small face fixed that. The idea spread quickly, and many variations followed.

Around the same time, internet users in Japan built their own style that you read straight on, without tilting your head. That style is called kaomoji (face characters), and it is what most people mean when they search "Japanese emoji" for text faces.

Classic Emoticons and Their Meaning

Here are the common Western emoticons with the usual emoticon meaning. Think of it as a short list of text emoji meanings you can keep handy. The hyphen nose is optional: 🙂 and 🙂 mean the same.

People asking for a "3 emoticon" usually mean <3: the less-than sign plus the number 3 looks like a heart lying on its side. For a skull text emoji, use x_x for "I'm dead" or copy the ☠ character from our smiley symbols page. More heart characters are on heart symbols.

Japanese Kaomoji: Kawaii Text Emoticons by Mood

Kawaii (cute) text emoticons use characters from many scripts. Pick by mood.

A nice detail for Indian readers: the teary eyes in (ಥ﹏ಥ) are the Kannada letter ಥ (tha). Kaomoji borrow shapes from any script that looks right. Because they use rare characters, a few may look slightly different, or show a box, on very old phones or in some fonts. These cute emoticons are popular in usernames and bios; for more decorative characters see aesthetic symbols.

The Shrug Emoji ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and How to Type It

The shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ means "I don't know" or "what can I do?". The face in the middle is the Japanese katakana letter ツ (tsu), and the raised arms are made from macrons, backslashes, underscores and a slash.

The easiest way to get it is to tap it in the grid above. If you paste it into an app that uses Markdown formatting, such as some chat and note apps, an arm can disappear, because the backslash and underscores are treated as formatting codes. Fix it like this:

1. Type the shrug once.
2. Add a second backslash, so the left arm becomes ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.
3. If the face turns italic or an underscore vanishes, put a backslash before each underscore too: ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯.
4. Send and check how it looks.

There is also a colour shrug emoji 🤷 (person shrugging) if you prefer a picture.

Text to Emoji: Let Your Keyboard Do It

You do not need a converter website for most text to emoji needs.

• Keyboard suggestions: on many Android keyboards and on iPhone, typing a word like "pizza" or "love" shows matching emojis in the suggestion bar. Tap one to swap.
• Auto-convert: some apps change 🙂 into 🙂 when you send it. If you want the text version to stay, look for an emoji auto-replace setting in that app.
• Colon codes: in apps like Slack and Discord, type a colon and a name, such as :smile:, to insert an emoji.
• Kaomoji keyboards: some keyboards include a kaomoji section next to emojis; otherwise, save your favourites as text shortcuts in keyboard settings.

For full typing steps on every device, read emoji keyboard shortcuts.